We’ve been asking you how the issues with the Washington Bridge have impacted your life, as part of our ongoing community-centered project, Breaking Point. One of the people we’ve heard from is Christopher Adamo, a massage therapist who lives in East Providence and works over the bridge in Providence. He says the traffic’s affected his work and personal life to the point that he’s considered moving out of state.
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The frequency of my use of the Washington Bridge is every day, sometimes multiple times a day, going to and from work, taking my son to and from school, visiting people. I used to live on the east side of Providence, but I lost my house during the pandemic. That’s why I moved to East Providence. And so I have friends over on that side. My office is over on that side. I go back and forth to my office sometimes multiple times a day.
I live right two blocks away from the center of East Providence … and the businesses are shuttered. There aren’t people there. We’ve lost business, lost businesses, because there’s no more traffic, because people are avoiding the area.
It’s impacted my business as well because we are right off of the Henderson Bridge up Waterman Avenue in Providence, and nobody wants to come and go because they either have to go over the Washington Bridge or they have to go over the Henderson Bridge. And there’s been so much traffic that it’s impacted our business as well.
I tell people to come over to visit me and they don’t want to come because like I’m not going over the bridge because it’s just, I mean, the problem is that also you don’t know when it’s going to be because sometimes at night they’ll close one lane to the bridge and then that impacts being able to get around. So yeah, I’ve had friends say, damn, we’re just not going to be, I’ll come over to my house or I’ll meet you somewhere.
In New York, in San Francisco, places with traffic, you expect it, so you can plan for it. I moved to East Providence because it was easy, right? There was never any traffic. Now there’s always something.
My worry is, with the increase of traffic going over the Washington Bridge on that side, who knows how long that bridge is going to last, because it is getting literally twice the traffic I think it was designed for.
And going across, it’s also a nightmare. The lanes are so narrow. I actually, one day, I was taking my son to school in the morning and I watched someone try to cut into another lane and clip the car in front of us. The whole quarter panel got taken off, and luckily, I was just passing them and they stopped all the traffic behind me. So I don’t know how long that took, so I got lucky that day, but we actually saw it happen and it’s because there’s just no room to maneuver around.
I have the same questions that I think that a lot of people have about the bridge, which is, how did they miss this? … Why weren’t people monitoring it? Why wasn’t it done the way it was supposed to be? And who were the engineers in charge of keeping track of that apparently, I mean, I thought we were, as a state, we had that under control somewhat. At least they keep touting themselves as saying how much they’re doing, all of that. But that bridge in particular, especially since there’s really no other alternative, should have been monitored a lot more closely and just wasn’t.
It has really been unpleasant. It actually made me think that maybe Providence isn’t where I want to be. If I’m going to deal with traffic, I’ll go back to New York, I’ll go back to San Francisco…It’s really unnecessary. If there was enough planning done and if there was any kind of expediting done, this would be over already.
My son is in his first year at Classical High School, and I’m definitely going to be here until he graduates. After that, we’re going to rethink. I hope that that bridge is done long before my son graduates, but from what I’ve heard, it’s quite possible it won’t be. That will have an effect on what my decision is going forward.
